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A new ethics opinion on confidentiality by the Indiana State Bar Association Legal Ethics Committee reaches some puzzling conclusions. The committee considered whether Indiana’s mandatory reporting statute for suspected child abuse or neglect required a lawyer who learns of such abuse or neglect while representing a client must report it. While acknowledging that the Indiana Supreme Court is the final authority on both the law and ethics in Indiana, the committee concluded that a lawyer was not required to report the suspected abuse unless the lawyer believed it necessary to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm. While that seems reasonable on its face, the committee made several leaps in reasoning to get there and may have provided some ill advice to lawyers in Indiana.

Unlike some other states, Indiana’s reporting statute does not exempt lawyers from the reporting duty. That means, unless the Indiana Supreme Court would step in and decide that the state’s Rule 1.6 trumps the state law, a lawyer who follows the opinion could be prosecuted for failing to report. In addition, the committee fails to acknowledge that Indiana’s Rule 1.6, like the ABA Model Rule, contains that confidentiality exception “to comply with other law or court order.”

Next, the committee inexplicably reasoned that because of the mandatory reporting law a lawyer must report suspected abuse or neglect “to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm” even though the exceptions to confidentiality in Indiana’s Rule 1.6, like in the ABA Model Rule, state that a lawyer may reveal information relating to a client’s representation in order to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm.

The ethics opinion may state a good policy position, but the committee goes out on limb by creatively trying to reconcile a lawyer’s ethical and legal obligations in such a situation. As it stands now, there is a direct conflict between the mandatory reporting law and the ethics rules, and the ethics opinion does not resolve this quandary for lawyers in Indiana.